Democratization of Content Creation Tools

I don’t need to discuss the power of new social media tools in allowing a voice and an audience to anyone who wants it and wants to share their talents.  If you follow this blog with any regularity, then you’ve probably accepted this as a fact and a new reality.  What I will share is a powerful example.

For you Star Wars/John Williams fans (like me!), here’s an awesome example of how new tools offer humans a new way to express themselves and express their talents:

My Impressions from the 2008 ECOO Conference

It has been one week since the ECOO 2008 conference and I have had some time to reflect upon my learning.  I’ve used some of this time to consider how effective I thought the conference was and the effectiveness of my presentation on mobile learning.  Here are 5 conclusions I have made:

1. In the teaching profession, we still have a long way to go with regards to technology adoption.  This ECOO conference was in its 29th year and still I met many who were extreme novices when it came to technology use in their teaching.  After 29 years, the majority of the conference delegates were likely not teachers when ECOO began it’s mission to be a voice for technology integration in education.  These teachers would have heard the message of the importance of using technology over the years but still many are not.  It also says a lot about the general state of technology integration when many at a technology conference are not regular users of technology in their own daily lives beyond using a cell phone to make voice calls.
2. Interesting messages are being passed on by those who are using technology with their students. I will not mention the names of presenters or presentations but I will mention that there were a couple of breakout sessions that I attended that left me puzzled.  In one session, one of the conference presenters kept saying that they were “low tech” and “preferred traditional teaching models” but was only using technology because “the students like it”.  In another presentation, by a university professor, the PowerPoint slide show being used had so much tiny text that it was impossible to read while at the same time the presenter stated that PowerPoint “needs to be used judiciously if it is to be used effectively”.
3. It’s unclear what teachers are really looking for with technology. In my presentation, I had a number of audience members who were giving me mixed messages.  On the one hand, it appeared that the audience was looking for practical examples of using mobile technology in classrooms but on the other hand, they seemed very dismissive of the examples that I was giving as impractical despite the fact that they were examples from real classrooms with real teachers and real students.  You can take a look a my examples by looking at my presentation slide show.
4. I’m not sure that I got a sense of what they next steps are. It’s great to have a conference that talks about possibilities and celebrates successes but I’m not sure I the delegates know what their next steps are.  What will they do to take their learning back to their classroom?  Perhaps I’m a bit guilty of this as well as my presentation focused more on possibilities and was skimpy on the discussion of next steps but in all fairness, my presentation topic is so highly controversial in today’s K-12 school environment that I think I need to convince people first of the viability of using mobile devices to help students learn.  What can we do to provide teachers with next steps to help them use technology with their students?
5. We are resource rich but weak in skillfully finding and utilizing these digital resources. Today’s reality sort of takes the traditional view of the scarcity of resources and turns it on it’s head.  With the wide variety of multimedia resources and creation tools available on the Internet, the wide variety of hardware that is available in our schools (both school property and property brought to school by the students themselves) and many of these resources available to teachers and students for free, the argument that we need more resources is a weak one in my mind.  However, what I notice is that, generally speaking, teachers don’t know that these resources exist and don’t know how to access them.  One piece of evidence for this is statements that I heard such as “I didn’t know that existed” or “I wish someone would have told me about that site”.  Another piece of evidence is the fact that the session presented by a representative from CBC archives who essentially provided only a demo of the site was better subscribed than other presentations that were more about using technology in pedagogically appropriate ways.

Please do not interpret my conclusions as a critique of the ECOO conference itself because I find this conference a very useful vehicle in providing a voice for technology integration in today’s K-12 classroom.  In addition, please do not interpret my conclusions as a critique of all teachers because I know that there are many teachers who are doing innovating things with the technology tools that they have available.  My conclusions are more an observation of the general willingness and attitudes of K-12 teachers in Ontario in integrating technology in their classrooms based on my experience of this sampling of teachers that attended this particular conference.  Let this be a wake-up call to everyone – technology can really help to differentiate instruction and the students in front of us have embraced it but it appears that many of the teachers that are in charge of the learning of these students have not embraced the use of technology on a wide scale.

Mobile Learning Presentation at ECOO 2008

On Friday November 14th, 2008, I delivered a presentation on mobile learning at the ECOO 2008 Conference titled “Mobile Learning: Embracing Handheld Devices for the Post-Pencil Classroom”.  If you are interested in my presentation, you can view the slideshow here:

http://www.slideshare.net/rdelorenzo/mobile-learning-presentation-update-presentation/

My reflections on the conference to come soon…

What Do You Think of My New Logo?

I’ve been thinking about creating a logo for The Mobile Learner blog and presentations.  I made a new logo using http://www.festisite.com What do you think?  Too Risky?

Update: I forgot to mention my source of inspiration!  I was inspired by the logo created by Nathan Toft and Jane Smith at http://www.portablepd.ca

On Universal Design and Differentiated Instruction

The idea of universal design is a new one to me.  I’ve starting doing some preliminary research on what universal design is and how the concept can be used in education to help students learn.  Since this topic is so new to me, I don’t feel that I can, as of yet, intelligently discuss how mobile devices can be incorporated into lessons that have been designed using the universal design model.  As I result, I am going to begin with some reflections on what I have discovered to this point about universal design.

I started by watching a couple of videos published by CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology).  What I learned from these videos is that universal design is all about designing lessons that incorporate a variety of activities that allow students to learn new concepts by interacting with the learning materials in various ways.  It appears to me that Universal Design differs from differentiated instruction in one important way – while differentiated instructions appears to me to be focused on including various approaches in helping students learn different concepts, Universal Design is more about designing a diverse learning environment to ensure that students engage in learning materials in different ways.  In addition, while differentiated instruction seems to me to be more about instruction only, Universal Design appears to be a combination of the design of the instruction, but also about the design of the spaces in which students learn.  If I’ve understood this correctly, then differentiated instruction is one aspect of Universal Design but Universal Design includes other considerations as well.  However, it may very well may be the case that I have not understood differentiated instruction well enough and that they are different terms describing the same thing.

I will have to conduct more research in order to fully understand the nature of these two terms a little bit better but what appears to be standard is the idea that teachers need to provide variety to students so that students can achieve learning goals in ways that make sense to them.  In this way of thinking, teachers conduct diagnostic assessments to judge where the students are at and design lessons that allow students to access the content of learning in different ways.  Students are able to demonstrate their learning by being given choice in the type of activities and culminating tasks that they can complete to demonstrate their understanding.  Mobile devices fit into the equation as they are tools that provide alternative means for students to access content, to organize thoughts and to publish content to a wider audience.  Multimedia tools allow students different ways to access content and different ways to interact with that content.

Stay tuned as after I learn more about differentiated instruction and universal design, I will being to consider in more depth how mobile devices fit in the universal design/differentiated instruction model(s)

One Year and Counting

It is exactly one year today since I began my reflective journey on the topic of mobile learning and using mobile devices in learning.  I must admit that this has been an enjoyable journey for me in engaging in conversation about new tools and the future of education.

One year after I began this blog, I am on the cusp of taking on a new direction in my career.  I am on the cusp of moving from my current role as an academic technology consultant to a role of school vice-principal.  I have seen others enthusiastically talk about their passions when they are in one role but then forget about these passions when they change roles.  However, unlike others I have seen before me, I refuse to let this passion die once my role changes.  I believe in the important evolutionary role of technology way too much to stop talking about how new technologies can move us to a new level in our social and biological evolution.  One year may bring life changes but this blog will continue on.

This appears to me that the discussion of using mobile technology to help kids learn is still very much a new topic.  After all, computers and laptops are just now entering the mainstream in education but costs and other barriers are still to high to make schools more fully based on technology.  As a matter of fact, mobile technology is really a niche topic in that many still believe in banning mobile technology tools instead of using tools that students bring with them to school to help them learn.  When we think of using learning resources, we don’t think of an iPod or PDA, nor do we think of a cell phone or smart phone despite their abilities to allow students to do more than one thing at a time.  Maybe that is why teachers are generally resistant to allowing students to use mobile tools – what I call multi-purposed other call distracting.  However, as new generations of teachers and students enter the school system, I believe that these tools will become a more accepted option to help students learn.  This should also force closed and restrictive IT departments to open up networks and allow staff and students to use their own productivity tools to help them learn.

As I enter my second year of reflections through this blog, I want to work toward a more inclusive conversation.  I find that in some posts, the conversation is really one-sided.  This is definitely the result of this being a new blog.  Hopefully, as I move forward, I can encourage more meaningful and two-way conversations with this blog.